It was an ill wind that came ‘round the cape that evening, and it lasted for close enough to a week. The waves grew teeth, the air was a bludgeon, and the rain shot down fair to stab anyone that poked their nose out of doors.
But the fish needed catching, so we all went out in the mornings anyways, or what might have been mornings under the clouds and above the whitecaps. And most of us came back on time every night. As our grandparents did, and theirs before them. Because doing things the way they must be done, that comes before safety. And that means coming back with fish.
One day, one of us came back with something extra, something more than fat greybacks and bulging nets. “Found it in a bucket,” they said. “A bucket, just bobbing in the waves.”
The bucket was black and rusted and made from who knew what, and it went to the trash heaps.
(anything placed in it slicked with oily who-knew-what. no-one dared taste food cooked in it)
The child was pale and plump, and he went to a willing couple who had milk to spare.
We named him Walter, and we called him Walt. And that was well and good enough to let him grow up properly and kindly, if not straight and tall. Stout and stubby-fingered, that was our Walt, always short of breath and ready to lend an extra hand. Not so much strength in him as stubbornness, as vast a supply of that as you could find in any mule.
He was such a small little thing, Walter Newman was. Four inches behind the other children, always scrambling to keep up, always with a bulgy belly and sunken dark eyes. With a smile ready though, held in place behind his teeth. Always ready, just waiting for the right moment to burst out from that round face. If you worked for it, he’d reward you just so. Just so.
When Walter was a small boy, but big enough to run, he wanted on the boats.
That was normal, that was fair enough. Little boys want to be their fathers and their big brothers. We all were little once, we all had grand dreams too big for our hands.
Walter reached too hard and too fast, but his grip served him well. Old Tim Hickory was eight hours offshore and seventeen fathoms deep when he heard the sneezing from underneath the old sou’wester he kept in his cabin. Pulled Walter out by the scuff of his neck and the roll of his fat, and shook him silly with cusses and threats. Told him this was no place for a fool little boy to be. Told him how dangerous the sea was. Told him about the sharks, and the waves, and the salt.
Walter listened, and Walter nodded. And then Walter stayed out there, on Tim Hickory’s boat, because Tim Hickory couldn’t turn back by then and he couldn’t spend his time minding little boys when there were fish to fish.
Walter spent his time on the bow, watching the grey bodies scooped into the sky, dripping and wriggling. He would hum to them, and sometimes sing. Nonsense songs, mashups of tunes he’d heard other children, parents, neighbors sing.
Sometimes the songs got on Tim Hickory’s nerves. But he was busy, and most of the time they would blend in with the sound of the waves and the nets.
Walter had only a little boy’s voice, of course. He couldn’t sing very loudly back then.
He got in all sorts of trouble when he got back, too. Bottom smacked black and blue, but not a peep from him, not a tear shed.
When Walter was a bigger boy, he tagged along fishing.
This was more organized, more proper. He got a longer lecture than most did, of course. Rules firmly laid, commands issued, fists thumped, threats levied.
He listened, and tied knots, and sat on the bow again, and watched the nets come in. Helped haul ‘em too, alongside his brother and father. And as he work, he whistled and sung and hummed.
His father told him to knock it off. His brother pinched him and giggled.
Walter kept on singing. And he listened hard. Listened far. Listened deep.
At day, nobody heard anything that wasn’t hull on water, grunts from lungs. At night, nobody was awake to tell. But Walter was a dreamer, and a good one. And he kept his ears open, in those dreams.
He smiled a lot that trip. And when he came back home, he sang songs to his baby sister in her cradle that she’d never heard before.
When Walter was a young man, he built a boat.
It was a good boat, firm of hull and fine of timber. Its paint was still fresh and almost sparkling when the water first enveloped it, its sails smelled of musty cupboards and dried timbers rather than salt. It was good – not astounding, not saddening, but good. Walter did a good job when he built that boat.
He took it out that day, him and his father. Came back in nets bulging, deck crammed full. Finned bodies spilling out of the wheelhouse, ropes tangled in slippery grey flesh and slapping muscled frames.
Walter didn’t pay much attention to the fish. He had an ear cocked and an absent stare for everyone, slaps on his back and congratulations aside.
The next day they went out again. Even bigger haul came with them this time. A shark was lashed to the boat’s side, big blue body writhing and wriggling as it twitched its way towards death by inches. They took the jaws and left the flesh for the gulls.
(It made them sick. Gulls will eat anything, but even they have limits).
The next day Walter left on his own.
The next day Walter came back, paddling.
A squall had come up and overturned the boat, he said, as he wrung the damp green-and-blue from his sweater. Nothing he could do. He’d ventured out too far by himself, got cocky. He’d swum the miles to shore without even a life-ring for flotation, it had happened so fast. The boat had flipped mast-to-keel and left him tangled in the nets, with just enough time to cut free and strike out before it brought him down.
It was a good story, as Walter told it in that shy, low voice of his. And we all nodded and sympathized with him – such a fine boat it had been – because after all he was a good fisherman, maybe even a great fisherman, and nobody could vouch against his skill. Bad luck and bad weather will stop the best of us in their tracks, and leave them lucky to still have their lives.
And nobody, not one person, not a one of us every spoke a word of how calm the weather had been for the past week.
Because neither had Walter.
Walter was a grown man with the bad luck of ten. But we loved him anyways, because he wouldn’t let it beat him.
A boat would be made.
A boat would be launched.
A boat would bring in one
two
three
four (once) catches.
Then it would be gone, and Walter would wash in with the tides, smiling that same rare gift of his, happy to be alive and with luck no better than before.
Months to build it. A week to lose it. At most. And how Walter did it, no one knew.
A gale.
Harsh water.
Struck a rock.
Angry shark, once. That raised eyebrows.
And we all would’ve scoffed at one of them, let alone all of them, but Walter’s smile when he came back was always so wonderful. And each time, it grew wider.
He sang in town, now. Mostly at night. Folks complained, but quietly, and soon they stopped. It was quiet, and almost too low to hear.
And then one year, not many ago, Walter and his brother and his father all got in their boats, cast off, and left without a word for one, two, three days.
They floated back in on the currents, damp and grinning, and they were changed men. Went straight down to their friends’ houses and stayed up all night talking.
The next day, six boats left, with Walter guiding the way.
Two days later, the tides fetch them back again. No sign of the boats.
The wives complained. The shorebounders complained. The children worried.
Walter smiled, and that made it all right. Walter stayed up and sang half the night as families argued and muttered and fought for hours, spend the other half listening.
Ten boats the next day
Eight the day after.
Nine after that.
Almost no boats left, but the fish came in anyways. Walter would strip naked and swim out there, come back in dragging net-fulls of things we’d never seen before. No greybacks, no fatmouths, things with too much eel in their blood and too little eyes. Slimy, but tasty.
Only really good to eat raw, though. Cooking liquefies the flesh. Disgusting.
Seasons went by. Walter kept us afloat as the boats were rebuilt.
(His father and brother joined him after a time. A few others later, I don’t recall who).
One beautiful day the first of the new hulls slipped into the water. And that was the day that they set hands on it and towed it away. No time for a motor, no time for paint, no time for nothing.
They needed that boat. We needed that boat.
“For mother,” Walter explained.
No-one had asked for the explanation. No-one thought he was talking about Lucy, Geoff’s wife, Jeremiah and Petunia’s mother, who’d fed him her milk when he was a little pale thing plucked from the waves.
The truth came out in bits and starts. Nobody much noticed as it did. It just happened. Oh, some people grumbled, some people muttered, but by the time we all knew anything it was already normal.
The boats were necessary offerings, of course. In the right place
(eight hours out, seventeen fathoms deep)
at the right time
(moonlight on the water, a dark starry sky)
in the right state of mind
(dreaming afloat, waves lapping on the rim of your hearing)
was where you left your gifts.
Here, mother. Take the land from us. We trust you. We love you. And you trust and love us.
Why else would you have given your son to us?
The last boat sank on the first day of summer.
Old Tim Hickory was on board. Mad as hell, he was.
We’d talked to him and talked to him, but he wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t pay attention.
Stubborn man. He set his heels to it and wouldn’t budge, not for that boat. His father’s father’s father had laid it, he would pilot it, no matter where it went. And he wouldn’t budge.
(Couldn’t, after he tied the anchor around and around and around and around himself)
So he followed his boat, captained it ‘till it was gone.
(He wore the old sou’wester. It was the first anyone had seen that happen in living memory, the faded old yellow against the dull grey of woollen sweater, tangled beard).
He must’ve been the first to see mother there, as keel met bottom.
Met bottom and passed on through it, into home.
Life is stranger now, and we don’t do as our grandparents did, or theirs before them.
We spend our evenings down in the bay and leave the beds back upon land, rot in the trash heaps.
A hall is being made beneath the bay, a hall of stones and shells with no lights, a hull timbered in barnacled wood, scraped bare of paint by tide and time.
Our sides ache for the waves, and cry salt tears in the air.
The children swim like giggling minnows, hands grown small and over-webbed.
Babes’ teeth sprout early and needling, and their mouths eschew milk for fish-lymph.
Last Sunday we burnt the last of our homes, lighting the fires with kindling from our docks.
It can be hard, to change this way. But when we feel doubt, or pain, or confusion, we look to the face of Walt Newman. And we see that smile behind his teeth, waiting to be given.
If we work for it, we are granted it. Just so.